Morocco/Western Sahara
12.12.00
Urgent Interventions

Morocco: Judicial Proceedings / Freedom of demonstration

URGENT APPEAL - THE OBSERVATORY

MOR 002/0012/ OBS 126
Judicial Proceedings / Freedom of demonstration
Morocco
12th December 2000

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the FIDH and the OMCT, requests you to intervene with utmost urgency in connection with the following situation in Morocco.

Brief description of the facts:

The Observatory has been informed that a peaceful demonstration organised by the Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH, member of the FIDH) for the setting-up of an independent truth commission on disappeared persons was violently dispersed. This occurred on 9th December 2000 on the occasion of the fifty second anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The police, by using disproportionate brutality against the demonstrators, took several people into custody. Members and persons in charge of both the Truth and Justice Forum and the AMDH - among whom its President, who is also the president of the Bar, Mr Abderrhmane Benameur - were held in custody for 24 hours. Thirty-six persons held in custody have been charged on the basis of article 17 of the public liberties code, dated 15 November 1958, concerning non-armed assembly disrupting law and order, and of article 11 relating to non-authorised demonstrations. These persons include four members of the AMDH central office: Mr. Benameur, Mr. Abdelhamihd, Mr. Benabdesselam, Mr. Lahcen, as well as a member of the AMDH administrative commission, Mrs Rouissi (a sister of disappeared persons) and several members of its branch offices. The hearing, initially scheduled on Monday 11 December 2000 at 1 p.m., has been postponed to 28 February 2001 at the request of about a hundred attending lawyers.

The Observatory considers these recent events, which took place just when the closing down of three weeklies caused a wave of protest, contradict the international commitments undertaken by Morocco, and in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which guarantees freedom of speech, association and peaceful assembly, as well as the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1998.

Action requested:

i. to put an end to every form of harassment, including that of a judicial order, against the human rights defenders charged in this case;

ii. to abide by the provisions of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9th 1999, and more particularly article 1 which provides that "everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realisation of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels”, and article 5a) which provides that “everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to meet and assemble peacefully”;

iii. more generally to abide by the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international and regional covenants ratified by Morocco.

Addresses:

- Mr. Abderrahmane Youssoufi, Prime Minister of Morocco : fax : 00 212 7 76 99 95/76 17 77 – Mr. Omar Azziman, Minister of Justice, fax : 00 212 7 73 07 72 – Mr. Mohamed Aujjar, Minister of Human Rights, fax : 00 212 7 67 19 67

Geneva-Paris, 12th December 2000

Kindly inform us of any action undertaken quoting the code number of this appeal in your reply.

The Observatory, a joint FIDH and OMCT venture, is dedicated to the protection of Human Rights Defenders and aims to offer them concrete support in their time of need.

The Observatory was the winner of the 1998 Human Rights Prize of the French Republic.

To contact the Observatory, call the emergency line: Fax : (+33 01) 55 8083 92
Tel FIDH : 33 (0) 1 43 55 20 11/ OMCT : +4122 809 49 39
E-mail : observatoire@iprolink.ch